Christin Stewart is the top power-hitting prospect in the Detroit Tigers system. He aspires to be the best overall hitter.

The 22-year-old outfielder got off on the right foot after being drafted 34th-overall last summer out of the University of Tennessee. Swinging from the left side, the muscular slugger slashed ..285/.372/.508 and bashed 10 home runs in half a season. He did the bulk of his damage in West Michigan, where he helped lead the Whitecaps to a Midwest League championship.

Stewart is highly touted, although the accolades come with cautions. Baseball America has lauded his plus bat speed and raw power, but also opined that he’s “an aggressive hitter whose swing gets long.”

This past summer, I asked the first-year pro about the latter assessment.

“There’s not a lot of movement in my swing,” Stewart told me. “I think I have a short swing to the ball. My extension through the ball can get a little long at times, and maybe that’s what they mean.”

Phil Clark, West Michigan’s hitting coach last year, had a different take. He concurred with his charge on length, but then to pointed to the start, as opposed to the finish. Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Weaver dominated high-A in his first full professional season. In 19 Florida State League starts, the St. Louis Cardinals’ 2014 first-round pick had a 1.11 WHIP and a 1.62 ERA.

There was no opportunity for the lanky righty to prove himself in Double-A. He didn’t make his first 2015 appearance until mid-May — according to St. Louis assistant GM Michael Girsch, there was “no specific injury” — and the club proceeded to keep him in the FSL for the entire campaign. Wanting to augment his innings — Weaver spun 105 at Palm Beach — they subsequently sent the 22-year-old former Florida State Seminole to the Arizona Fall League for further seasoning.

Weaver, who gets high marks for his changeup and his ability to command the strike zone, discussed his development late in the AFL season.

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Weaver on his build and his delivery: “Right now, I’m 6’ 2” and about 175 pounds. I work on getting bigger and stronger, but that’s not something I see as an absolute must. I accept how I’m built. Being loose and agile are tools that I can use to my advantage.

“My delivery is long and loose. I have a coil with my leg and throw across my body — I just kind of sling it in there. I don’t know exactly who I’d compare my windup to. The coil isn’t extreme — it’s not a Cueto or a Lincecum — but rather more like an Arrieta, where he kind of has that sideways coil.”

On his curveball and his slider: “My innings were down a little bit, so they wanted me to tack on a few more (in the AFL). They also wanted me to come here to get more reps on my slider. Read the rest of this entry »

In an era where punch outs are more common than ever, Justin Nicolino is an anomaly. Of the 328 pitchers who threw 50-or-more innings last year, 327 had a higher strikeout rate than the 24-year-old left-hander. In his rookie season for the Miami Marlins, Nicolino fanned just 23 batters in 74 innings.

Despite the dearth of Ks, Nicolino enjoyed a modicum of success. He won five of his nine decisions, and his 4.01 ERA was certainly respectable. In seven of his 12 starts he allowed two or fewer runs.

Nicolino knows that he probably has to K more than 2.8 batters per nine innings in order to remain in a big league rotation. That doesn’t mean he has to become Steve Carlton. In 1976, Randy Jones had a 2.7 K/9 and won the National League Cy Young award. Five years earlier, Dave McNally went 21-9, 2.89 while posting a 3.7 K/9. Jamie Moyer, yet another crafty lefty, was at 5.4 for his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Eppler isn’t sure if he’s bringing philosophical change to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. That’s not something he’s especially concerned with. How things were done under Jerry Dipoto is largely immaterial. Eppler’s focus is on the future, which began when he took over as the team’s general manager in early October.

Eppler is a first-year GM, but he’s not without experience. A graduate of the University of Connecticut — his degree is in finance — he spent the last 11 years in the New York Yankees front office. Before that, the erstwhile collegiate hurler worked in scouting and player development for the Colorado Rockies.

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Eppler on his role with the Yankees: “The quick and easy answer would be to say I was one of (Brian Cashman’s) assistant firefighters. I helped out in a lot of different areas. Originally, Brian hired me to run the pro scouting department. From there, it manifested itself into more involvement with major league operations, roster management, contract negotiation and player procurement.

“I had some existing relationships with agents from my days in Colorado. I had a comfort level signing players and negotiating contracts. I continued to learn more about rules and the protocols as they relate to roster management.

“In New York, I stayed involved with the player development side and was one of the liaisons between our major league club and what was going on in the upper levels of our farm system. The job essentially morphed into a potpourri of everything.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Gelles was recently given a new title. The Baltimore Orioles’ Director of Analytics since April 2014, she is now the Director of Analytics and Major League Contracts. Based on her career track, don’t be surprised if she one day becomes a general manager.

In 2010, Gelles graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College with a degree in Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought. Along the way, she interned for the Pirates in their baseball operations department. Upon leaving school, she worked for Major League Baseball’s Labor Relations Department. After that, she served a year-long internship with the Orioles before being hired full time when Dan Duquette became team president in November 2011.

She began making her mark even before Duquette arrived. While still an intern, Gelles “identified an area of need in the organization, and started to build out our first internal database.”

Think about that for a moment. One year out of college, an intern initiated one of the most-meaningful advancements in team history. Read the rest of this entry »

Jake Odorizzi is a wanted man. The 25-year-old right-hander is reportedly a trade target for multiple teams this offseason. It’s easy to see why. Last year, in his second full season with the Tampa Bay Rays, Odorizzi logged a 3.35 ERA and a 3.61 FIP over 28 starts. Arbitration eligible after the coming campaign, he’s under team control four more years.

Odorizzi isn’t a power pitcher, nor is he a control artist. He’s certainly not a sinker-baller. What he does is mix-and-match with a full repertoire that includes a riding fastball and a dipping splitter. Thoughtful in his approach, he might be best described as budding craftsman.

Odorizzi, who remains a Ray for the time being — Tampa Bay’s interest in dealing him is of course speculative — discussed his development in the final week of September.

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Odorizzi on his 2015 season: “The biggest change from last year to this year is maturity. I’m learning the league, plus there’s the confidence you gain. As a rookie, everything is kind of an unknown, and now I have a better idea of what to expect. That’s been big, given all of the injuries we had early on. Chris Archer and I have had to grow, and step up to fill the void. Even with as young as we are, we’re kind of the veteran guys in the rotation. Circumstances forced us to have what I guess you could call an older approach. Read the rest of this entry »

No one hacked into the Houston Astros database 40 years ago. Had that been possible, they could have gleaned valuable information by doing so. Tal Smith is the reason why.

Smith was ahead of his time. While serving as the Astros director of player personnel, he began accumulating and cataloguing data “around 1969 or 1970.”

“This was only a few years after the advent of the amateur draft, and I thought it was important,” explained Smith. “I wanted a backlog of all the draft choices —where they were coming from, out of high school, out of college, and so on — and to track those players’ progress. We inputted all that data. This was back in the old keypunch days.”

His colleagues weren’t as enamored with his efforts. Smith left to work for the Yankees in 1973, and when he returned to Houston two years later he found that no one had maintained the program. It was necessary for him to start over. Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Trammell is about to fall off the Hall of Fame ballot. In his 15th and final year of eligibility, the long-time Detroit Tigers shortstop will once again fail to garner sufficient support from the BBWAA electorate. His Cooperstown chances will now rest in the hands of the Veterans Committee.

The following conversation with Trammell doesn’t address his Hall of Fame worthiness. I considered broaching the subject when I spoke to him this past summer, but ultimately opted against it. After all, what could he have offered besides humble platitudes?

I talked to Trammell about defense. More specifically, we discussed positioning and the proliferation of shifting. He knows the subject(s) well. A prolific defender in his day, Trammell — now a special assistant to the general manager — spends much of his summers tutoring infielders in the Tigers’ minor-league system.

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Trammell on defensive positioning in his era (1977-1996): “We were positioned very little. Our coaches gave us some direction, but it was more of us making those decisions. They wanted it that way. In the first half of my career, we didn’t have any video — our primary scouting report was watching our opponent. That’s how we did it. The video and all that is great — they’re great tools — but you need a combination. You should never lose sight of how important it is to watch the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

n 1960, when he was playing in the South Atlantic League, Phil Niekro was told that he could pitch in the big leagues if he could get his knuckleball over the plate more consistently. Those words, which came from manager Red Murff, were the springboard to a Hall of Fame career.

“No one had ever told me that before, and it was my motivator,” Niekro told me recently. “It was then that I hunkered down and really worked on my knuckleball.”

Niekro’s younger brother, Joe Niekro, had to wait much longer for similar encouragement. He wasn’t pushed to throw the pitch that made his family famous until he’d been in the big leagues for nearly a decade.

“When Joe came up through the minor leagues, he was your normal, conventional pitcher,” explained Niekro. “He did have a knuckleball, but the Cubs didn’t want him to throw it. When he got to Detroit, they wouldn’t let him throw it. He had a good one, but his managers weren’t comfortable with him using it in games.” Read the rest of this entry »

In 2015, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared via the FanGraphs Q&A series. Others came courtesy of my Sunday Notes column. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

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“We have to understand how a pitcher’s movements affect the ball, how the movement on the ball affects the hitter’s reaction, and how the batted-ball results average out over the course of a long season. To effectively map out this sequence of events, you need to have a thorough understanding of pitching mechanics, pitch data, and sabermetrics, because they all work together.” — Brian Bannister, Red Sox pitching analyst, January 2015

“You can take two guys with the exact same stuff and have them put up the exact same type of contact, but if the defense is one step slower, or they’re not shifted properly, that can be the difference between having an 4.01 ERA or a 3.01 ERA.” — Chris Archer, Rays pitcher, January 2015

“I would equate that to throwing my cutter… It’s the pitch I throw more than anything. The other pitches could be other songs, and the song I always come back to is my cutter.” — Evan Meek, journeyman reliever and guitar player, January 2015

“I was like a squirrel. I could turn left, turn right, go up, go down. Basically, everything that caught my eye, I was going straight for. I wasn’t ready – especially spiritually – for the journey that’s coming.” — Mark Hamburger, Twins minor league pitcher, January 2015 Read the rest of this entry »